Lee E. Blair, artist and Disney animator who had the rare distinction of winning an Olympic gold medal for watercolor painting, has died. He was 81. Blair died of heart failure in Santa Cruz on June 19. The Los Angeles native won his gold medal in 1932, the first year the Olympics were staged in Los Angeles, for a watercolor of a rodeo. The painting was donated to a high school and has since been lost.

The Aug. 23 feature on fashion, "Women's Fall Fashion, The Frill of It All," was the best ever! Goodby and good riddance to the stuffy, stilted, suffocating, uniformed, business-suit look that stagnated through the '80s and early '90s. A huge welcome back to unique, flamboyant individuality. May it ever flourish! B. FISHER Loma Linda

Re "Reconciliation needed -- in D.C.," Opinion, Sept. 12 Ronald Brownstein's article asking how can we expect political reconciliation between the Sunnis and the Shiites in Iraq if we don't have it between Democrats and Republicans in Washington overlooks a key point: Reconciliation does not mean agreeing with each other, it means talking with each other toward a common goal. We have peaceful, albeit sometimes acrimonious, talking in our capital; we have violence and wanton murder in Iraq.

President Richard von Weizsaeker recently reminded his fellow citizens that a key reason democracy failed in Germany in the 1920s was that there simply weren't enough German democrats around to support it. It has become especially clear in the last few weeks that a lot of ordinary Germans are determined that this devastating experience, which led first to the triumph of Nazism and ultimately to Germany's wartime destruction and division, won't be repeated in the 1990s.

Darren Dreifort avoided being linked with Barry Bonds--Terry Adams was not as fortunate. The Dodger reliever will forever be mentioned with the future hall of famer after giving up Bonds' 500th home run Tuesday night--a two-run, eighth-inning shot that gave the San Francisco Giants a 3-2 victory before a sellout crowd of 41,059 at Pacific Bell Park. With the Giants trailing, 2-1, and Bonds on deck, Rich Aurilia led off with a triple to right-center against Adams.

It is his last season. Roger Clemens is emphatic on that. If opinions vary as to whether he is about to become the last dinosaur in his last season, this much can also be said emphatically: As a 300-game winner, he will become -- at the least -- representative of an endangered species. Then again, what's new? If it was easy to win 300, more than 20 pitchers would have done it.

Drummer Francisco Aguabella sits alone during a rehearsal break earlier this week, quietly tapping his hands on two cocktail tables at the Pasadena Jazz Institute, where he's scheduled to perform tonight in a tribute to his late colleague, Carlos "Patato" Valdez, the dean of Afro-Cuban percussionists. His beats are barely audible, but the rhythm is visible in the fluid movements of his wrist.